Just when you think the W. Jerusalem bureau was beginning to defy the IDF censors to spite the Bolshevik clench on foreign media in Gaza, Associated Press editor and senior correspondent, Karin Laub, puts out a report that violates major principles of journalism while showing disregard for victims of state aggression.

Only a juggernaut like AP could get away with such a major faux pas as title-body disagreement. In a report whose headline feigns concern over Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, Laub manages to deliver a bemoaning analysis of the harm those deaths will inflict on the public image of the civilian-murderers. In addition, she peddles an easily-disprovable account about a past Israeli massacre. Other than those major flaws, the report is decent.

Here’s the lede to “Ground war in Gaza drives up civilian casualties” [1]:

The rising civilian death toll in Israel’s campaign in Gaza highlights the pitfalls of Israel’s powerful army using lethal force against often invisible Hamas guerrillas taking cover among civilians.

And what are those pitfalls?

[T]he images of maimed or bloodied Palestinian civilians, including children, is likely to heighten international pressure on Israel to abort the offensive before it has obtained its main objective — hitting Hamas hard so it will halt rocket fire on Israeli border towns.

About 300 of the more than 670 Palestinians killed so far are civilians, according to Palestinian and U.N. figures. Of those killed, at least 130 are children age 16 and under, says the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which tracks casualties.

(We’ll skip over the AP WJB’s typical flaw of taking Israeli officials at their word about those multiple and conflicting “main objective[s].”)

That is an excellent summary of the Palestinian death toll. But there’s one major problem: you’d think that by “pitfalls” Laub meant the civilian deaths themselves, or the legal consequences for Israeli generals, Olmert, et al. Instead, it’s all about the damage those civilian deaths will inflict on Israel’s image, thus hampering its ability to press on with the “main objective.”

Next, we get some background on Israel’s history with those pitfalls; only, the example cited is more Hasbara than it is history:

In Israel’s campaign against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas in 1996, errant Israeli artillery shells killed 91 Lebanese civilians at a U.N. base near the village of Qana, turning initial international support for the operation into harsh criticism.

Firstly, over 100 civilians were killed, including four U.N. workers. Secondly, investigations by the U.N., human rights groups, and even Time Magazine (!) all concluded that the massacre was no accident, and that it constituted war crimes. Where is AP getting its historical accounts and casualty figures?

The rest of the report is not all that bad. Sure, it explains away Israel’s penchant for firing into heavily-crowded areas, but ends nicely with refutation by a third-party:

The U.N. has called for an investigation of the rising toll among civilians, after several of its installations were hit. U.N. officials noted that Israel’s military had been given the exact locations of U.N. buildings.

Israel insists its doing its best to minimize civilian casualties. However, Chris Gunness, a spokesman for Gaza’s main U.N. aid agency, said “it would have to be known to any military planner as a matter of certainty that such and overwhelming and disproportionate use of force would inevitably lead to civilian casualties.”

Israel has a history of obliterating clearly-marked U.N. buildings where civilians and non-belligerents are hiding. And even though they are forewarned of the buildings’ locations and non-belligerent status, it’s always been either an accident or that they were lured or forced into it by militants firing at them from the vicinity. The above refutation, nicely included in the report, puts the lie to both excuses.

Now, what we need is for the editors at the AP WJB to keep doing more of the same.

"The Israeli hasbara machine’s main job has always been and continues to be to turn the black into white, the white into black and the big lie into a 'truth' glorified by millions, especially in the west.

To effect these obscene lies and 'virtual realities,' the Israeli government counts heavily on the Jewish-controlled or Jewish influenced media in the western world, especially in North America where telling the truth about Israel is the ultimate taboo."from xymphora - see more

Only a Jewish-dominated media could get away with calling the Zionist murder and maiming of thousands of women and children as a “fight against terrorism.” In fact, Israel has murdered and maimed tens of thousands of non-Jewish women and children since its establishment by terror of the Jewish, Zionist State. Can anyone name even one Palestinian act of terror in the entire history of Israel that is even a fraction of the Zionist terrorism of 3,000 dead and maimed Palestinians, half of them women and children in just the last 12 days?

You say that you want to hunt down terrorists Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama?

The truth is that you dine with them, you bow before them like servile dogs and you support sending these terrorist murderers billions of dollars worth of weapons of mass destruction.

Only the Jewish controlled media and Jewish controlled American political system could label the Palestinians who have been driven out of their homes, murdered and maimed and tortured by the score, caged and locked in huge concentration camps called the West Bank and Gaza, as “terrorists.” Starving Palestinians fight back with practically homemade weapons against a nation with one of the world’s largest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, and the Jewish media and controlled politicians call them the terrorists.

While Palestinian women and children are maimed or murdered by the thousands, media pundits and Israeli spokesmen have to chutzpah to call this human carnage fighting terrorism, when of course, the unleashed Jewish terrorism is a real terrorism on a far greater scale of human suffering and death than anything ever alleged against the ethnically-cleansed and beaten Palestinians.

The fact that the American government and most of the American media could support such inhumanity is a stain on the United States and every citizen of this country. I love America, but I despise the federal government and the Jewish-influenced media that fuels it. It is a government that has become the true enemy of the great majority of the people of the United States, the founding people of America who are now held hostage by 3 percent of the population with loyalty to a foreign state. And this Jewish controlled government has also become an enemy to all the people of the world who dare to stand up against the evils of Zionism and Jewish supremacism.

My God, we must wake up now. If we don’t not only will the Palestinians continue to suffer but we Americans will suffer a similar fate. May God prevent that!

And May God now be with the suffering men and women and children of Gaza.

If you care at all about what is happening in Gaza no doubt you have been reading all manner of reasons for what on the surface may seem to be a senseless war. To make matters worse there is the U.S. world view of Israel as a poor abused and endangered group of innocents huddled together shivering in fear from a bunch of religion crazed Arabs. Then there is the propaganda machine of Israel itself, a never ending source of disinformation and lies. Compounding it all is of course the U.S. news media whose insidious coverage of this human tragedy has only obscured the reality behind a smoke screen of affected “fair” reporting posing as a moderate and thoughtful source of facts though thankfully fewer and fewer people are buying into it as the real facts of the gargantuan modern well equipped murder machine, the IDF, run by the Israeli government stomps the virtually helpless Palestinians into the dirt come into light.

Indeed, if we were forced to rely on the news media without the benefit of the internet where a handful of luminaries such as Arthur Silber, Chris Floyd, Dennis Perrin, Jonathan Schwarz, Bernard Chazelle, to name a few we would be groping in the dark of a sterile landscape dominated by the mainstream news media who’s job is apparently self appointed apologists for the U.S. government and who would have us suffocating beneath a blanket of ignorance. Another benefit of the internet is that it allows us to read news from sources other than that of the U.S. such as some of the better news outlets like those in Brittan and elsewhere. I do not claim that this even begins to solve the problems wrought by state violence and propaganda but it is a small incremental step in a better direction to dispel the indoctrination we are all subject to and victims of.more - Halcyon Days

1 comment:

Neighboring countries? Forget that too. We pay off Egypt and Jordan to kiss Israeli ass and they do.

Saudi Arabi won't do a damn thing except squawk.

If the Arab countries are so upset about the murderous Israeli's invading Gaza, why don't they announce an oil embargo against the West?

I know they don't have nukes like Israel does, but they do have the oil and withholding that or even threatening to withold the oil is a powerful weapon.

Will the US stop this homicidal invasion? Nope.

When Israel first started their Blitzkreig, powerful members of the US House and Senate fought to be the first at the microphone to announce how much they loved Israel and how much Gaza needed to pay, for the crime of trying to stay alive.

Bush and Rice have been kissing so much Israeli butt their tongues probably have blisters shaped like the Star of David.

How Dare I - Collected Essays On The Destructive Force Of Judaism

Les Visible - The Curious Tale of Ash and The Whine: A Novel of the Unnatural and Supernatural

Follow by Email

Subscribe To

Search This Blog

Translate

Just in case there is a misunderstanding - Fair Use Notice

This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. in our efforts to identify humanity's problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. A click on a hyperlink is a request for information. Consistent with this notice you are welcome to make 'fair use' of anything you find on this web site. However, if you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.